Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: The year is twenty thirty one. A last ditch attempt
Speaker 2: to cool down our overheating planet by dimming the Sun's
Speaker 2: rays has failed, plunging the Earth into an ice age
Speaker 2: and throwing humanity into chaos. The remaining survivors struggle to
Speaker 2: make do with limited resources, living out their days aboard
Speaker 2: a train endlessly circling the globe. Wealthy citizens live in
Speaker 2: safe luxury. Society's cast outs are confined to the back
Speaker 2: of the train. Podcasters document everything from small chili studios.
Speaker 2: It's the end of the world as we know it, Okay,
Speaker 2: just kidding. Aside from that last part, this is just
Speaker 2: the plot of the twenty thirteen sci fi film Snow Piercer,
Speaker 2: and don't worry us. Present day podcasters are fine. The
Speaker 2: studio is pretty cozy. No ice age yet. But this
Speaker 2: idea of humans trying to fight climate change by blocking
Speaker 2: the sun has appeared in movies and books for years.
Speaker 2: Usually the effects are disastrous, like so many dystopian fantasies,
Speaker 2: though they've got some basis in reality because the science
Speaker 2: that some of these stories draw from actually exists.
Speaker 1: It's very cheap at the low end, seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year to do this in a way that would
Speaker 1: actually slash further warming in half, which is pretty significant.
Speaker 2: Sophia Alexander is a wealth reporter who covers billionaires and
Speaker 2: philanthropy for Bloomberg. This approach she's talking about is called
Speaker 2: solar radiation modification or SRM for short, and it's part
Speaker 2: of a broader field of research called geoengineering, and recently
Speaker 2: it started getting a lot more attention from venture capitalists,
Speaker 2: startup founders, and billionaires.
Speaker 1: I mean, climate change is the issue of our generation
Speaker 1: and probably generations to come, and so it is a
Speaker 1: huge problem that people want solutions to. And for my
Speaker 1: beat covering a lot of billionaire philanthropy, it's a topic
Speaker 1: that a lot of these billionaires are interested in. It's
Speaker 1: not really a question of if we can. We definitely can,
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of are we sure we want
Speaker 1: to do this?
Speaker 2: Today on the show, why funding for SRM research is
Speaker 2: ramping up and why Silicon Valley's interest in experiments to
Speaker 2: block the sun is getting some advocates and researchers worried.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg news, Sophie, you've been digging into some new enthusiasm
Speaker 2: around a not so new idea to slow climate change.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker 1: So this is called solar geoengineering or solar radiation modification,
Speaker 1: and it's an idea that goes back to the fifties
Speaker 1: but is really only picking up steam now. And the
Speaker 1: idea is to essentially block the sun. There's a number
Speaker 1: of methods, but the best researched one is to spray
Speaker 1: sulfates into the stratosphere and all of those particles would
Speaker 1: reflect sunlight and then make the planet less hot.
Speaker 2: Where does the idea come from.
Speaker 1: The idea actually comes from volcanoes. So something similar happens.
Speaker 1: One of a volcano erupts, It shoots all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff up, and if it's a very powerful eruption, then
Speaker 1: all of those particles will be shot all the way
Speaker 1: up in In the past, we've seen volcanic eruptions shoot
Speaker 1: millions and millions of tons of sulfates into the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: Basically the year after these big volcanic eruptions, all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff happens. But one of the things that happens
Speaker 1: is the planet is cooled, and so Everyone's like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: this could block the sun.
Speaker 2: Wow, and then the idea has picked up steam ever since.
Speaker 1: It didn't really pick up steam again until like the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties in the early two thousands, when a
Speaker 1: couple of researchers in California stood in modeling what would
Speaker 1: happen if you did this? And they actually set out
Speaker 1: thinking that they were just going to put the idea
Speaker 1: to rest, but then it turns out that it actually
Speaker 1: could work. This Nobel Prize winner Paul Kurutsen publishes a
Speaker 1: paper citing their work, and all of a sudden people
Speaker 1: start taking it seriously, and so it's really starts picking
Speaker 1: up in two thousand and six ish, still a very
Speaker 1: controversial idea, but more and more people are picking it up.
Speaker 2: What made you want to start looking into this? Now?
Speaker 1: More philanthropic funding than ever is being put into solar
Speaker 1: geo engineering right now, and that is coming from all
Speaker 1: the world, including in the UK and in New York.
Speaker 1: But most of the interest and most of the new
Speaker 1: names who are really starting to talk about this and
Speaker 1: start funding this are in Silicon Valley. The fact that
Speaker 1: it's concentrated in Silicon Valley, it makes sense for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. For one, that's where the new money is,
Speaker 1: but also like, it just sounds cool. It's using technology
Speaker 1: to block the sun and save the planet. That's very
Speaker 1: appealing to a Silicon Valley crowd.
Speaker 2: But it's not just that it seems cool. Some people
Speaker 2: think that, faced with a rapidly warming planet, SRM could
Speaker 2: be one of our best bets. What do proponents say
Speaker 2: about its potential?
Speaker 1: In an ideal world, we would get off greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: and take the steps necessary to stop heating up the planet.
Speaker 1: But we're not doing that, and so we don't want
Speaker 1: to get ten years down the line and realize, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't have any knowledge about this thing, and we're
Speaker 1: just going to have to start doing it because we
Speaker 1: don't have any other choice. So that's what the proponents
Speaker 1: of specifically research think. The proponents of just deploying it
Speaker 1: right now are like, we're already at that point. What
Speaker 1: are we waiting for. Let's do it. We can figure
Speaker 1: out what happens later.
Speaker 2: What do the critics say?
Speaker 1: The critics say, that's just it's not a good idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, the critics say, we don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and so it's just too risky to start
Speaker 1: doing this all of a sudden. There are just so
Speaker 1: many things that we would need to get into place
Speaker 1: before we were to start doing it.
Speaker 2: But if there's one thing Sophie knows about the tech industry,
Speaker 2: it's that it doesn't always wait for permission to start experimenting.
Speaker 2: One startup called Stardust Solutions has raised fifteen million dollars
Speaker 2: just to do research and development on planet cooling tech.
Speaker 2: Others are forging ahead. Tell me about some of those startups.
Speaker 2: What are the companies that are actually trying to make
Speaker 2: SRM work.
Speaker 1: So the best known one is make sunsets, but it's
Speaker 1: very controversial in the actual solar geoengineering world because they
Speaker 1: kind of just have this very like stereotypical silicon value
Speaker 1: mentality of move fast and break things. What they do
Speaker 1: is they launch balloons filled with sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: But it's just simply not enough sulfur dioxide to actually
Speaker 1: be doing anything because if you have it patchwork, if
Speaker 1: you're only deploying sulfates and one part of the globe,
Speaker 1: that's going to have adverse effects on the climate, on
Speaker 1: rain patterns, on things like that this needs to be
Speaker 1: evenly distributed around the whole planet, which is why there's
Speaker 1: so much emphasis on this being, you know, a geopolitical hurdle.
Speaker 1: And I mean, there's this novel, The Termination Shock by
Speaker 1: Neil Stevenson, and that was actually the inspiration for make Sunsets.
Speaker 1: And in that novel there's this billionaire mc cooligan.
Speaker 2: Nike Cooligan logan pretty on the nose.
Speaker 1: And he shoots sulfur into the statosphere and like it's
Speaker 1: not a happy ending, Like by any means, it's not good.
Speaker 2: After the break. Why the tech sector's interest in SRM
Speaker 2: is so worrying to scientists and nonprofits? Where government regulation
Speaker 2: comes in and what happens when communities affected by geoengineering
Speaker 2: experiments push back. We've been talking to Sophie Alexander, a
Speaker 2: wealth reporter for Bloomberg about solar radiation modification. It's a
Speaker 2: controversial technology that's meant to cool the warming planet by
Speaker 2: blocking the sun. I ask Sophie why the tech industry's
Speaker 2: involvement in SRM is especially divisive.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, first of all, it's just controversial to
Speaker 1: begin with, to geoengineer the planet. We don't know what
Speaker 1: might come from it, which is why so many people
Speaker 1: are committing all of money to research. For the most
Speaker 1: part is so we can figure out, Okay, how is
Speaker 1: this going to affect rainfall, How is this going to
Speaker 1: affect you know, malaria patterns and things like that.
Speaker 2: Spraying sunlight reflecting sulfates into the stratosphere could have any
Speaker 2: number of unintended consequences. Critics say cooling the earth too
Speaker 2: much could cause crop failures and disease outbreaks, but turning
Speaker 2: off the sulfate guns too quickly could also risk plunging
Speaker 2: the Earth into something called termination shock. The Grave scenario
Speaker 2: Neil Stevenson's sci fi book is named.
Speaker 1: After Termination Shock is what would happen if we weren't
Speaker 1: to wean ourselves off of solar geoengineering. If we were
Speaker 1: to all of a sudden cold Turkey and stop shooting
Speaker 1: sulfates into the air, then the planet would just heat
Speaker 1: up really fast. It would basically like make up for
Speaker 1: lost time, and that would cause all sorts of weather
Speaker 1: problems and other problems.
Speaker 2: With the global stakes of solar geoengineering. So Hi Sophie says,
Speaker 2: there are also major concerns about how this kind of
Speaker 2: technology would be regulated. And which governments or individuals would
Speaker 2: be calling the shots.
Speaker 1: There is a camp that is trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that we are prepared for the inevitable geopolitical issues that
Speaker 1: will come with this, which include getting more of this
Speaker 1: research to come from the Global South so that if
Speaker 1: the time comes where governments are making the decision of
Speaker 1: okay are we going to do this, countries in the
Speaker 1: Global South can go to their own researchers and say, well,
Speaker 1: should we do this? How will this impact us?
Speaker 2: But Sophie says, the people driving these efforts aren't always
Speaker 2: thinking about that impact. A few years ago, a Harvard
Speaker 2: University led SRM research project, funded in part by Bill Gates,
Speaker 2: was set to launch in the Swedish Arctic. The indigenous
Speaker 2: community that lived there wasn't consulted first, and after protests
Speaker 2: and pushback, the experiment with canceled.
Speaker 1: The move fast and break things ethos is sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have time to make sure that everyone's okay
Speaker 1: with this, We just need to do this.
Speaker 2: The US and the EU are beginning to dip their
Speaker 2: toes into funding SRM research, but while the US is
Speaker 2: trying to develop ways to suss out rogue launches. The
Speaker 2: space is still largely unregulated. When Sophie asked the US's
Speaker 2: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whether it had any protocols
Speaker 2: to deal with an unauthorized deployment of the technology, for example,
Speaker 2: it said it wasn't aware.
Speaker 1: Of any If we wanted to do this, like we
Speaker 1: could start doing this. It's really more of like a
Speaker 1: political issue, Like the US government has really taken its
Speaker 1: time with touching this at all. They only designated explicit
Speaker 1: funding for SRM research through NOAH in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Some of the people that you're talking to are worried
Speaker 2: that the developing this technology are not going to wait,
Speaker 2: that they're going to apply silicon valleys, move fast and
Speaker 2: break things mentality to this rollout. Why is that so
Speaker 2: scary to some people?
Speaker 1: There is the risk that if we move fast and
Speaker 1: break things on the scale of make sunsets, which is
Speaker 1: small or a more medium sized scale, or even a
Speaker 1: bigger scale, you're just going to erode trust in the public.
Speaker 1: That is necessary because a lot of people are afraid
Speaker 1: that people want to use this technology to sort of
Speaker 1: push back the date that we can reduce our emissions.
Speaker 1: We are getting hotter and hotter, and there's no signs
Speaker 1: of that stopping.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Thomas Lum. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Erin Edwards and Brian Japatta. It was mixed by
Speaker 2: Alex Sugira. It was fact checked by Adrianna tak. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board Sage Bauman is
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make
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